Re: Oh dear, the birthday party issue!

[Guest guest]

No, it would bother me too! My little girl is the same way, almost 5.

Well, it is the neighbor child missing out.

M.

[ ] Oh dear, the birthday party

issue!

Hello all

I'm not sure that I've posted on here before, but I have a

developmentally delayed (particularly in speech and language) 10 year

old daughter whom I homeschool due to the fact that we live in the

French speaking part of Switzerland.At a certain point it seemed

important to concentrate on English to make life easier for her, but of

course we are surrounded by French.

I try my best to put her in social situations, but it's not

always easy for her since her immediate neighbours speak French (she

understands a lot but is not yet speaking it much). We mix with few

other English speaking homeschoolers and English speaking children of

friends, though I would love her to be more in contact with others.

Having said that, her 9 year old neighbour is a particular

friend, even if they don't see each other on a regular basis. I try to

help out my neighbour by looking after her two children when she needs

help from time to time, and otherwise the kids see each other playing

outside and join each other.

To cut a long story short, they have always invited each other

to their birthday parties(unfortunately I didn't get around to doing one

this year), but the little girl was just here and dropped the fact that

on Friday she is celebrating her birthday as the local pool and wouldn't

be inviting my daughter because she doesn't know her other schoolfriends

and she doesn't speak French.

Why do I take these things to heart? Any of you also caught out

by the birthday party test?

My daughter seems to let this stuff go over her head, would love

to know whether I am the only one with thin skin at times!!

Best wishes,

[Guest guest]

I'd look at it this way. If the little girl was trying to keep your daughter

out of the party for any reason other than the reasons stated; your daughter

'doesn't' know her friends from school and speech impaired or not -your daughter

doesn't speak French -your neighbor could have kept the whole thing from you.

She didn't hide it -she told you because it made sense to her and probably her

parents. Most kids that age wouldn't do something like this without parental

input of some sort.

I mean makes sense to me why she would at least think your daughter would be

uncomfortable in that type of party setting- she sounds like a good friend to

me. Even if the little girl's friends spoke English but all of them knew each

other from class it would still be slightly awkward as they all would have

common things to talk about -but put that together with they don't speak

English? I mean if one of my friends who spoke only German (which I don't

speak) was having a birthday party with friends who only spoke German and no

English and invited me -I'd feel more awkward trying to get out of why I didn't

want to go!!

I know quite a few kids who have more than one party for their birthday. One

for family and close friends. One for classmates which may or may not involve

any " close friends " But perhaps her family either doesn't want to do more than

one party or doesn't have the money.

What you can do is say " why don't we do something special for you for your

birthday with just the two of you girls? " and invite this neighbor to celebrate

her birthday with your daughter by...take them to the movies or some other show,

for a manicure, to a water park etc.

I'm sure both girls will have a blast!

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